Hey 👋🏽

What question do you answer when you get up in the morning?

I've spent August meditating on this.

I don't have an explicit conversation with myself and I guess that's the point. When I look back on my to do lists from earlier this year, the question is clear and low on Maslow's hierarchy:

What do I have to do today? (to make it to tomorrow)"

In search of better questions, I spent the month human being instead of human doing, sitting, reflecting, noticing and journaling with the garage door down. Being instead of doing I saw:

Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad in the sky while stargazing in Cape Cod
the strong women who held the fort down in Nantucket while their husbands were off to catch their Moby Dicks while walking along the Sconset bluffs
the growth of every lifejacketed child on Skaket Beach pushing boundaries and terrifying their parents while sitting with my beach chair in the sea grassy water
the capitalist competition of construction teams in Fortnight Bethesda racing to build the tallest apartment complex while drinking my morning coffee
the heart of a 5yo taking to the responsibility of puppy training with the seriousness of a wildland firefighter while standing in the grass
the commitment of a man to change despite the 6 day a week job in an industry that refuses to
the effort of allies who understand that repetition and persistence are the only way to create lasting change

Every day that I've started sitting still I've had the focus to ask and answer better questions, to elevate out of the day to day and to see and support the bigger picture.

Longtermism is the gift that 2020 has given us. We're forced to examine the impact of our action or inaction on public health, on civil rights, on our families, friends, customers, team members and neighbors. We do it for the victims of COVID-19, for Kobe and Chadwick, for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake and the countless others stoking fire of the black lives matter movement, and people who have lost their homes.

I talked to WSJ about boundaries and burnout and the out loud reflection gave me the pause I needed to finish resetting my personal mission statement, my goals and my schedule to create a forcing function to think longer term. And we got a puppy - to walk us, to make us play, to keep us grounded.

Every day when I wake up, I remember:

And I ask a different question:

What are the most important things I can do today for my family, my team and myself longterm?

I see you, I love you, let's have a great week,

P.S. feedback about this format? want to chat? hit reply.